News Headlines:

Pak security stop journalists from entering Kasab's village

21 Nov 2012, 1918 hrs IST
, AGENCIES

Pakistani
security and intelligence agencies on Wednesday (November 21) barred journalists
and television cameramen from entering Ajmal Kasab's hometown in Punjab
province, hours after the lone surviving terrorist involved in the Mumbai
attacks was hanged in a Pune jail.

The security personnel, who were
in plain clothes and pretended to be villagers, stopped reporters from entering
Faridkot village, located 150 km from the Punjab capital of Lahore, several
journalists said.

The personnel tried to snatch cameras from crews of
some TV news channels and manhandled them when they argued they had come to
Faridkot to film and interview Kasab's neighbours. "The men from the security
agencies in the guise of villagers were deployed on the road leading to Kasab's
neighbourhood. They asked us to go back and not to try to defame Pakistan," a
correspondent of a leading English daily, who did not want to be named, told
PTI.

He said the men tried to snatch cameras from the crews of
Express News, Channel 5 and Apna TV and manhandled some
media
representatives when they insisted on entering the
neighbourhood.

"Why are you bent on defaming our country? Don't play
into the hands of an enemy country," the correspondent quoted one of the men as
having said.

"Go back home and forget interviewing people of this
village," he further quoted the man as having said.

A journalist of
Express News told PTI that he contacted the district police chief and informed
him about the behaviour of the plain clothes personnel.

"The police
officers told us that it was better for us to leave the place as the villagers
are very angry over the Kasab episode. They do not want to talk," the journalist
said.

Kasab was born in the farming village of Faridkot in 1987. His
father sold snacks like 'pakoras' from a cart. Neighbours have claimed that
Kasab loved Bollywood movies and karate as a child. He reportedly left the
village when he was a teenager and went in search of work. Kasab subsequently
joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba and was trained along with other terrorists at camps
in Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for the November 2008
assault on Mumbai that killed 166 people.